University Sexual abuse policies

April 30, 2013 5:51 PM

I'm working on researching undergraduate University policies on sexual abuse and hitting a wall. Ideally I'm looking for the highlights and lowlights of Canadian university policies and how they respond to sexual abuse committed by students and/or to students. Is there a school out there that is really getting this right? Does anyone know where things are desperately wrong? I need some reliable sources to draw from, because what I've been finding has mostly been hearsay or dodgy.
posted by Glambie to Education (6 answers total)

Are you looking for actual policies or for academic commentary on their success? Most of the policieis should be pretty easy to find - ie, the University of Toronto's policy on sexual harassment.

Sexual abuse in the sense of physical assault is of course a legal matter, so policies in that are probably aren't that relevant.
posted by modernnomad at 6:17 PM on April 30, 2013

What kind of searching have you done already? I found a number of journal articles:

Sexual Harassment in Universities: A Critical View of the Institutional Response

Subtle forms of violence: Sexual harassment of female faculty and teaching assistants

Workplace harassment and the victimization of women

The Incidence and Prevalence of Woman Abuse in Canadian University and College Dating Relationships

Also, OHRC Policy on preventing sexual and gender-based harassment with further resources/background (left-side links menu.)
posted by desuetude at 6:26 PM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: What I'm looking for is more of a view of how the schools are at acting on what they have on paper. It is, indeed, not hard to find most schools' policies, but I am looking for a sense of how well they deliver on their policies. Most places I've seen have strong wording with regard to sexual harassment (as many workplaces do) but I'm looking for what the school would do, outside of the legal ramifications, in the case that one student attacks another.
posted by Glambie at 6:28 PM on April 30, 2013

Don't forget to include compliance issues--Canada has mandatory reporting rules for certain occupations. Policies that are good about compliance will include the information on mandatory reporting of evidence of sexual abuse so that those professionals know their duties.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:58 PM on April 30, 2013

You could compile and compare anonymized reports from a representative sample* of sexual harassment offices, where they exist (eg), police stats**, and I guess news coverage (but interpret the last carefully, esp if the subject is a lightning-rod university like York U in Toronto) and then see if you can get lucky with a few case studies out of that, and then compare what you've found to the policies of 1-5 (as representative as you can establish) universities.

*and/or define your population of universities more narrowly, by e.g. geographic region, student population, MacLean's categories ('comprehensive', research, and I think 'small'), or some combination thereof.

**knowing these will be the most egregious cases.
posted by nelljie at 10:52 PM on April 30, 2013

The web site of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education often targets the misuse and abuse of sexual harrassment policies.
posted by yclipse at 11:39 AM on May 1, 2013